NaMoDesMo 7 Black Dogs

The Black Dogs are enigmatic figures, roughly canine in form, jet black wolf hounds the size of a small mule. Their eyes glow red and in the dark their fur crackles with blue sparks. They are seen most often at execution sites and memorials to the dead, and are said to be harbingers of death. Never is more than one Black Dog seen at a time, and most of the tales are warnings of their menace and malice. Every so often a woman will be guided home in the dark hours by a black dog, and often the corpses of bandits will soon be found near her path. And there have been hundreds of witnesses to the black dogs riping apart hordes of the undead, hunting those creatures that Na Essad occasionally spawns with no apparent cause. But most tales are darker, of a man seeing a Black Dog, and the next morning he will be missing, his house the site of a struggle, the claws and massive tooth marks of a gigantic beast all that hints of where he went. Oddly, halfling tales of the Black Dogs are always of a dangerous but friendly guardian, a beast that sees to the safety of orphan children until the community can find them, a giant, gentle with its charges fierce with any who would harm them. Halfling children are taught to watch for the black dogs, only instead of a scary story, they know that the hounds presage safety.